Deaths of 2 Russian oligarchs within 48 hours add to wave of executives found dead in ‘suspicious’ circumstances. Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter prompts a discussion about the nature of a privately-owned public sphere. A definition of 'girl' prompts one man to send internet death threats to the staff of Merriam-Webster. All this and more in this week's Strange News.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of My Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called
me Bed, and we are joined as always with our
super producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
the stuff they don't want you to know. It's time, folks,
for some strange news. Now we comb through the forums,
(00:47):
the dark corners of the Internet. We try to bring
you things you might not have heard about or talk
about them in a way that the normal media isn't
really approaching. So, of course, Uh, one of the most
hazardous occupations right now is uh to be a Russian oligarch.
We're going to talk about that. Uh. There's a lot
(01:08):
of power and danger in knowledge. We're gonna talk about
a guy who was very offended by that. He's angry
at He's angry at the dictionary basically, uh. And then
we're also gonna answer the question, what do you get
the man who has literally everything as all the stuff.
(01:28):
You know what I mean is maybe his birthdays coming up.
Maybe he just wants to get something nice for himself.
He can't get him a camel like he would all
you just have as many camels as he wants. I propose,
just get him one more thing, even even if it's redundant.
You guys, then he has doubles, and then maybe he
gets triples are safe. They're they're best. That's true. Triples
(01:51):
is best. Triples are saying, even one to Mary, she's
a model and she died. Alright, anyway, shout out that
I think you should leave. Uh, we're talking about We're
talking about Elon Musk and Twitter. Unless you have been
purposely trying to avoid that story. He recently into the
(02:14):
deal looks like it's definitely gonna happen. Uh. This was
announced today as we record April two, THOWO bottom out
for forty five billion dollars. Uh. You do you guys
want to talk about that first? Like, I I know,
we meant we teased this a little because it was
(02:36):
already in the works last week we weren't talking, but
it seems like it didn't seem as certain fact that
you know, there could have been a poison pill put
in that would have diluted his shares. There any number
of things that would lead to like a hostile takeover attempt,
But it seems like the board of Twitter decided to
(02:58):
play ball sotty. Soon it will be a must run platform. First,
before we get into the details, we want to set
some basics, and I think it's helpful for us all
to give our own opinions here. Um, we can read
the stuff that he proposes to change about Twitter, but
(03:19):
before we dive in, and wanted to ask you guys,
what's your initial take for it? Against it? Does it matter?
I mean, I just don't care for the guy. He
bugs me, He rubs me the wrong way in a
pretty uh palpable fashion. But I do have to say
I respect the guy's hustle. I respect the guy's ability
(03:41):
to power move basically anybody, and when you're sitting on
two seventy three billion in net worth, you kind of
got the capital to do that. But he played that
board like a fiddle man. It was all like, Okay,
I'm gonna buy up all these shares and then I'm
He's like the single, you know, largest sherald in the
companies like, Oh, I'm in a hating the idea of
being on your board. Oh wait, it turns out that
(04:02):
puts limitations on all the things I can do and say.
Nobody puts Elon in a corner, you know, And then
all of a sudden, it's like he's trash talking Twitter
on Twitter. Uh, he's actually he's standing up for freedom
of speech. But like it also seems like he doesn't
like people making fun of him on the Internet. Is
he just going to clamp down on stuff like that?
(04:23):
Is he really a proponent of freedom of speech? I
just think the guy's a troll and I think he's
kind of dangerous. For me, the story is all about
what you just said. When you have that much money
in net worth, right, and you are your life is
worth this much money, it doesn't mean that you actually
have access to that amount of money. It means that
somebody like Elon Musk can go to Morgan Stanley and
(04:45):
Bank of America and those banks will give you billions
of dollars twenty billion dollars a piece or more so
that you can buy something else. Like that's crazy to me.
That is that just doesn't feel like it should exist
that one human being can do that. Let me give you,
guys another couple of examples of what people are worried about. So,
(05:07):
if you're a person at a certain age, you may
remember a brick and mortar toy store called Toys are Us.
Toys are Us is not around anymore because another company
bought it and they were able to cut a bunch
of costs to up profits, but then offset the debt
by sending it out to what had become a shell
(05:28):
of the company that once was Toys r Us. And
this spelled doom for that company, but it spelled profits
for the forces that we're engaging in this predatory activity.
Some people will tell you, yeah, it's just business as usual,
and then other people say yes, but things can be
business as usual and still be bad, you know what
I mean. So there are concerns that Musk might do
(05:53):
some kind of pumping the value of this and then
selling it off and then walking away. Twitter is struggled
to be profitable for for a while. That's pretty clear.
It's also been pretty controversial for quite some time. It
also has a lot of criticism about the algorithm. That's
a big deal. It's got a lot of criticism about bots,
(06:16):
or foreign to SIMPO agents. Uh, here's the thing. It's
never been bigger than than other social media platforms. Twitter
has like two seventeen million people, which is a lot
of people, but it's not doing Facebook Heyday numbers for instance,
or Instagram numbers necessarily. My first question was why why
(06:40):
this move, even for the world's official most wealthy person official,
because no one knows how much money putin has case
some point, even for the world's most wealthy person billion
kind of a big purchase, you know, I would say,
and a lot of it. As you beautifully pointed out, Matt,
(07:02):
a portion of that money is coming to him from
a bank, right, He's being assisted a bit. He's not
just coming by with the world's biggest suitcase filled with cash,
so that would be hilarious. Uh. Instead, there are there's
a lot of speculation about what prompted him to do this.
(07:23):
He had some cryptic polls before when he got what
nine percent of the company something like that. I want
to give you what he said, and then I want
to talk about one of the conspiracy theories I've found
which people are accepting a fact hasn't been confirmed by him.
So first he said he wants to preserve free speech
(07:45):
on Twitter. For him, he's saying it's not about the money,
it's just the content moderators were actively tamping down on
free speech and debate. He said, the free speech is
the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the
digital town square where matters vital to the future of
humanity are debated. So he wants to have more free speech,
(08:09):
less I guess hansi content moderators. He also wants to
make the algorithm open, which is interesting, his argument being
that then you can look at the code and you
can see why some tweets are hitting your feed and
why others seem to be buried or almost shadow bands.
That's interesting. I'm not against that, but I mean, here's
(08:31):
my question for you guys. Is Twitter that big a deal? Still?
I've never been a Twitter person, and I know a
certainly the people that are, and I've always try to
described as sort of a toxic cess pit of like negativity.
But also even when Ellen was kind of trolling Twitter,
he pointed out that some of their biggest power users
hadn't sent a tweet in over a year, like Justin Bieber,
(08:53):
for example, Like I heard this piece I think it
was on the Daily Uh. And this this journalist was
talking about how Ellen when he kind of was, you know,
going for Twitter on Twitter, um, after they kind of
like put all these limitations on him potentially for joining
the board. He pointed out all these problems with Twitter
after like behind this huge share. So it's like, I
(09:14):
don't know if I buy it, man, Like, I know
you use Twitter, bin, and I know there's a lot
of interesting people on Twitter, and there's you know, Frank
friend of the show, dear friend of of us uses
it a lot. Um. I just have never had much
use for it. If if if something ends up trending on Twitter,
usually see it reposted as a screenshot or like on Instagram,
which is my platform of choice. But do you believe
the whole town Square of the Internet of the World
(09:37):
thing or do you think he's just kind of it's
just smoke. I think he's just trying to pump up
the shares and make a bunch of money. Well, here
here the other two big things we should know about this. Yes,
he has in the past troll Twitter on Twitter. You know,
you gotta you gotta admire the hutzpah of it. But
i'd also like to point to a great New York
(10:00):
Times live update that's occurring as we record. As soon
as this was announced that he was taking over the
company at fifty four dollars and twenty cents to share
thirty eight percent over what you know, would you'd normally
buy it for uh. He sent some regulators into a panic.
The board said yes, and he says it's about He
(10:23):
says he also wants to this is interesting, defeat all
the spam bots. You gotta like the gaming, the gaming nomenclature.
But more importantly, which something I think might bother some
folks Twitter users in the crowd. He wants to authenticate
all humans, which means there will be another blow to
(10:44):
anonymity on Twitter. Right. And this is something that different
governments and state level actors have pushed for in the past,
the idea that the Internet should not have the option
of anonymity in any way. It's usually presented as a
way to prevent crimes, particularly the red meat crimes, that
(11:05):
everyone can reasonably oppose, like the idea of saying, you know,
we need everybody. The UK did something like this a
while back and it didn't work for them, but they
said we want everybody to be easily identifiable by their
government name anywhere on the Internet in the United Kingdom,
because it will help us prevent the abuse of children.
(11:28):
And this is clever, whether or not you think they're sincere.
This is uh, from a logic standpoint, it's a very
clever way to frame stuff, because then anybody who says
I don't think people should have to clearly identify themselves
all the time, uh, then they will inherently on some
level be tied in with people who abuse children. It's
(11:50):
it's brilliant. It's the kind of fearmongering that helps a
lot of surveillance laws get put into place. And this
is not obviously obviously this is a US condoning any
crimes like that. We're just saying it's misleading sometimes. Does
I mean everyone has to get a blue check mark? Now?
Is that the deal? Like you basically have to be
somehow multi level authenticated to be on the internet and
(12:13):
use like your real name. Is he trying to eliminate
the troll by forcing people to use their true identities?
Is that I'm speaking? Sure, I'm understanding clear these are
like the four big things he said so far. We
just don't know how much of that is. We don't
know what the specifics of that would look like yet.
I mean that that's an interesting debate, guys, the concept
(12:35):
of somehow pulling anonymity off of things like social media
and comment like when you post on a website's comments. Right,
I think I think we've got two stories that are
gonna match up pretty well here today. Yeah, right, which
is ironic considering that Elon Musk is kind of King
of the trolls too, so it's like, what what's his angle?
(12:58):
You know, I'm very suspicious of all of this. Yeah, Okay,
So here we get to the conspiracy theory. I almost
hesitate to call it a conspiracy theory, but there's this
common school of thought going around in the past, the
past few weeks or so that Musk actually is buying
Twitter as a way of shutting down this kid who
(13:22):
figured out how to track his private jet. And he
originally offered this guy a relatively small sum of money
to stop doing it, and the guy said, no, sorry,
you can't buy everything modern age Mount Samosa. And then
the idea is that he reacted by going all into
buy Twitter. That feels a little simplified to me. I
(13:45):
think maybe there's you know, if we could read the
guy's mind, there's a morass of other factors and variables
playing in. But it also opens up a conversation that
I've been having on Twitter. I admitted Eben Bowl and
HSW where uh, we're talking about the free speech aspect
of this. We said it in the past. You know,
(14:05):
a lot of people use social media. Millions upon millions
of people use it every day to communicate. It's purposely
built to be addictive and give you that little endorphin rush.
As a matter of fact, I have great respect. My
favorite conversations are when my friends and I aren't constantly
looking at our phones, but those are increasingly rare in general.
(14:27):
And with this in mind, it's sometimes easy to forget
that something so ubiquitous is still a private platform. Right Like,
if you go into any private business and you say
stuff that they don't like, it doesn't matter what you're saying,
they can push you out if they don't like it.
And Twitter, despite being seen as a champion of free
(14:50):
speech in many places, is still a private entity, which
means it can change its rules at any time because
who reads the terms of service and then you just
if you don't dig it, then you have to leave.
That's that's the rule. There's not like a an amendment
or something. You know, if you uh, that's that's why
(15:11):
you can. You can go into employment at a car
dealership and if they don't like what you're saying about
their competitor, if you're saying, look, I know I work
at a Ford dealership, but those Nissans are pretty nice.
They don't have to put up with that. You know,
you're out the door, right, do not pass go, do
(15:31):
not collect a hundred dollars. I used to work at
a music store that I want name uh in my hometown,
which I've said before, so you probably do some googling
and figure it out which one. They were horrible, horrible
people that ran this music store. They actively only hired
young kids, so and I thought it was the greatest
job in the world when I got hired there, when
I was in like, you know, high school. Um. And
they trained us and everyone that worked for them to
(15:54):
overcharge people, to sell things as high close to list
price as possible. And if anyone ever they found out
that anyone bought something at one of their competitors, they
would be banned from the store for life, and we
would have to We teenagers were the ones that had
to say, sorry, you can't come in because of this
if they even breathe a word of it, and it's
(16:15):
it's a not uncommon thing. So the question is really
what what I'm hoping to do here, folks, is to
set us up for deeper analysis later. By now, when
this strange news segment comes out, you will have heard
all of all of these facts already. Some small things
may have changed, right, uh, But barring any revelations, that's
(16:35):
where we are. I want to set it up with
questions for deeper analysis. What is the interaction between private
tech giants and free speech? What should that interaction be? Uh?
Do you believe that must whether you love the guy
or hate him, do you believe that his uh, he
has been honest and transparent about his motivations? Is there
(16:56):
something else at play? What does this mean for the future.
Here's how I'd like to end it. We talked about
we talked about the getting something for the guy who
has everything? What do you think he wants to buy next?
We'll marinate on that for a second. There're a word
from our sponsors and we'll be back with more strange
news and we're back. Got then you're right. Further analysis,
(17:25):
it's gonna be This Musk story is gonna be something.
Keep it on because it is. It is an interesting question,
like the the idea of being able to leverage that
kind of wealth and too god knows what, and to
be able to like I don't know, it's just I
think his rise to that level of opulence happened so quickly.
I think in two thousand and twenty he was like
the thirty five richest man in the world, and now
(17:46):
he's the richest man in the world. Um, and with
that comes a whole lot of power. Uh. It's a
really good question that you post been and I'm interested
in exploring this further, but for now we're gonna go
down a bit of a different rabbit hole about power,
the power of language. UM, Who controls it? Who decides
(18:06):
when words mean what they mean? If those definitions change
over time. Well, one of the big arbiters of of
this UH decision making power is the Miriam Webster dictionary. UH.
Websters defines UH woman, girl, and female in certain ways,
and these definitions have shifted over time. UH. Today the
(18:30):
word um girl is defined in websters as of relating
to or being the sex that typically has the capacity
to bear young or produce eggs, and having a gender
identity that is the opposite of mail. So let's let's
think about I don't have an older legacy definition in
(18:52):
front of me, but I think we can all probably
pick uh some of the additions to make it kind
of catch up with the times. The idea of gender identity,
you know, that being a thing and of relating to
you know, adding those instead of just being the sex
that is typically the capacity to bear young or produce eggs,
UM makes a whole lot of sense gender identity and
(19:13):
fluidity and the way we as humans and as um
you know, citizens really treat and I think about people
with differing gender identities than what they were born with.
It's come a long way. I mean, there's obviously still
horrible injustices and horrible UM violence against um, the trans community,
(19:38):
UH specifically where it used to be more highlighting and
focusing on the gay or the queer community, you know,
hate crimes. Now it is very much something that is
affecting very disproportionately young trans people. UM. Who are you
know being killed all over the world just because of
the way they the way they look, the way they identify. UM.
(19:59):
But webs has decided to go, you know, to be
that leader, to be the arbiter of culture and to
move that definition forward. That is my opinion. I I
applaud them for doing that. But there's some people, likely
the same kinds of people that would do harm to
people with transidentities, UM, who who don't like that, who
think that it represents some sort of agenda, some sort
(20:21):
of nefarious plot to pollute the minds of the youth
or something like that. And one such person UM is
a man by the name of Jeremy David Hanson, who,
between October two and October eight, according to this article
in Gizmoto UM by Jodi Serrano, submitted multiple threatening messages
(20:45):
on the like contact us form on the I'm sorry,
I'm laughing. It's just like some how you think people
would use that form on the Webster's website, UM and threatening,
essentially ranting about in opposition to things I was just describing. UM,
these these changes, these uh adaptations of these these definitions
(21:06):
over time. UM. One of the I'm gonna use some
He's got some very charged language in here, but I'm
gonna read it. I'm gonna bleep out anything that I
think is just beyond. But he says your headquarters should
be shot up and bombed. It is sickening that you
have caved to the cultural Marxist anti science and a
word I'm not going to use here, but it's starts
(21:28):
with a T and ends with annie um agenda and
altered the definition of quote female as part of the
left efforts to corrupt and degrade the English language and
deny reality. You evil Marxists should all be killed. It
would be poetic justice to have someone storm your offices
(21:48):
and shoot up the place, leaving none of you commies alive. Yeah. So,
in another screed on the same form, he said, it's
absolutely sickening that Miriam Webster now tells blatant lies and
promotes anti science propaganda. There is no such thing as
quote gender identity end quote. Um. Let's see the imbecile
(22:13):
who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot.
And this is actually a comment he wrote on the
online version of the the Dictionary on the comment page
for the definition of female seems very interesting. They would
efer have a comment section on the dictionary. But there
you go. UH and if if we if we need
(22:34):
proof that the internet will create rage just about anything
and a reason to put nasty comments, it's it's people
commenting on the dictionary. UM. But this guy's under investigation.
There's a U S attorney and signed of the case
who said in a statement that UM anonymous threats against
specific communities will not be tolerated, adding that perpetrators will
(22:56):
be identified, arrested, and held accountable in federal court and
quoting part of the Gizmo article. In addition to her quote,
UM An FBI special agent on the case, Joseph Bana Volanta,
who's in charge of the FBI's Boston agency, UM, he said,
this is the case. Everyone has a right to express
their opinion, but repeatedly threatened to kill people UH has
(23:17):
has been alleged, takes it to a new level. Threats
to life are most certainly not protective speech, and they
cause real fear in UM in victims, which was very
clearly the case because the webster's office actually shut down
for five days because of this. So that's the story.
What what what do you guys think of this kind
(23:38):
of absolute vitriol, pointed at a such a such a
seemingly innocuous publication as the Dictionary, and yet, like I
said at the top, the ability to kind of guide
the definition of those words, it is. It is a
lot of power which I think is being exercised for
the good in this situation. My first bonds is, uh,
(24:01):
I guess he didn't have the money to buy the dictionary,
you know, like to buy the whole company, and this
change it and says a champion of free speech or whatever,
I'm kidding, But no, it's clearly this person has been
radicalize right in in some way, it does not matter
what someone's particular personal beliefs are, right, you can have
(24:25):
your personal beliefs as reprehensible as they are in the US.
And this is one of those countries where you can
also talk trash about the government and not get black bagged,
which we all kind of take for granted nowadays. But
we don't know how long it'll last, So enjoy it,
white Camp. But the thing here is that this I
don't I've never met this guy. I haven't communicated with
(24:48):
him before this story. But one thing that we can
say without stereotyping is that in a lot of these cases,
this kind of probrium and vitriol and and hate speech
is coming from a not entirely sound mind, you know
what I mean, A mind that has maybe been caught
in some algorithmic bubble and just bouncing around with their
(25:11):
only points of access being the same kind of echo
chamber information. You know. It might be that something personal
happened in this person's life that became the impetus for
them to start making these threats. But I believe, no,
he hasn't been convicted of anything. Right, he's on dollar bonds. Okay,
(25:34):
that's right. And you know, all of these these statements
are being reported where we have to attach alleged alleged
here because he has not been convicted and he obviously
didn't actually do anything. But to make these types of
threats is a step beyond the pale of free speech.
He's thirty four years old, uh, from Rossmore, California. Just
to add that detail, how did he even find out?
(25:55):
It's a good question. Must have been a bobby of
his just checking out the updated editions of the dictionary.
And that's when I was, wait a minute, what's this fly?
It's interesting to me that he was using that comment
section of I guess the dictionary to make anonymous posts.
So this person probably believed that he would never be identified.
(26:18):
If this was in fact him making these posts hasn't
been proven in a court of law yet, but you know,
this person also allegedly made I think an anonymous Twitter
account or something that they made. Then, Yeah, it was
an anonymous Twitter account called a nony mouse or non
emos or something like that, and was sending more I
(26:40):
guess you had. He had to use Twitter in order
to make comments and other things. So it's just like
if if if Musk had his way and everybody was verified,
this guy would have been we got you can't say
those things. You get a fine or you know now
we're watching you, or you know you're in trouble, and
we know it for sure. We don't have to go
through a court system like this to like prove it
(27:03):
in a court of law. We know it, you're verified,
you typed it. Well, I I gotta say that. I mean, like,
you know, at what point can you chalk it up
to dark humor or like just obscenely black, you know,
sardonic humor like in this Johnny Depp Amber heard case,
Like Johnny Depp was quoted some of his tweets or
not tweets rather text about Amber heard saying I hope
(27:25):
that sea words rotting corpse gets found in the trunk
of a Hyundai Sonata or something like that. I mean,
is that a threat or is he just being and
using like really dark, gnarly humor. I mean, you know,
the question of humor is very um, it's very subjective.
I guess maybe the issue here comes with the repetition
(27:47):
and the specificity. Yeah, and the fact that there's you
know you okay. First off, pretending something is humorous is
an agel tactic of the abusive and bullies. Uh they're
not very intelligent more as creative people, so they don't
change their tactics very often. So it's you know, it's
the idea of saying, oh, I'm just kidding. In those
(28:08):
kind of cases, your question has to be really because
usually humor has some kind of humorous aspect to it
or some sort of punchline to it. Right, not to
be you know, the Emperor of jokes or anything. But
I've heard a few of my time, and the one
the ones that work are actually kind of humorous, dark humor.
(28:29):
Total other thing. Uh, And I agree with your point,
like there can be aligned with dark humor. I think
we all love dark humor. Uh, most people in two
just kind of accept that as the normal humor these days.
But I would say with the Johnny Depp comparison, doesn't
part of the question chinge on the verb usage, like
(28:49):
I hope this happens is that is not saying someone
go do this or I'm going to do this. You know,
in the irony of this is it all comes down
to the power of words, doesn't it, Like how seriously
should we take words? You could argue not that seriously.
It's only words. It doesn't really become real until it
(29:11):
becomes a deed. And the police will even tell you
that for the most part, Like if you're freaked out
by somebody and you think they're they're like stalking you
because they they're sending you too many messages on the
Internet or something, and they haven't actually said I'm going
to kill you. Um, they they they'll tell you he's
seen in movies all the time. They know they can't
do anything about it until someone actually commits a crime. Well,
(29:33):
the messed up thing is think about how many mass
shooting events that we've seen just this year in two
where post the event occurring on the primary suspect or
the person that was arrested or found dead, they're the
person who did the shooting or the killing had made
social posts that were very specific or made videos that
were very specific about what they wanted to do, and
(29:54):
maybe sometimes they weren't even so specific. They just wanted
to do something and they wanted to take action. So like,
it stinks to know that we've got that on one side,
because until they do something, you cannot arrest that person
for Not yet it feels like it's coming soon. But yeah, um,
it seems like this is gonna be the way in
(30:16):
right looking at social media posts and maybe having control
mechanism on your twitters and your Instagrams and YouTube, which
is this is why we can't have nice things. Yeah,
and just last little detail I think is important that
the charge is UM. He's supposed to appear in federal
court coming up this week that we're recording it. Uh.
The charge he faces is one count of interstate communication
(30:40):
of threats to commit violence UM And that's directly outlined
in a news released from the U. S. Attorney's Office
for the district of Massachusetts, and that could carry with
it the penalty of five years in prison. And I
find two dollars. I have a feeling the barrier of
the burden of proof hear is going to be very,
very difficult. I don't think he's gonna get anywhere near
(31:02):
any event. It really depends. It's what you said about verbs.
If someone should do this, I you know, it would
be what did he say, should be killed someone? It
would be poetic justice to have someone go in your
office is the other thing I just have to add.
(31:23):
If you read the English encyclopedias or dictionaries, excuse me,
whether it's Miriam Webster or the O. E. Ed Oxford
English Dictionary, you'll you'll find that this language in particular
is filled with a bunch of other words that are
way worth worth uh deriding like we have. There's so
(31:44):
many words that are insufferable, honestly. And if I was
on the right if I was on the right definition
page with the comments, and I saw somebody say this, uh,
this word is trash. Whoever brought this over from Latin
or fourteenth century France, I hope they hope they had. Yeah,
I'd be like Okay, I got it, man, I don't
(32:05):
think it's shot with a blunderbuss. Yeah. Like, and if
I see somebody raising hell fire and brimstone and taking
out the digital pitchforks for words like dongle, then I'm
gonna say, yeah, I mean, that's a silly one. We
all are, we all have to say that one in
a serious conversation. It's weird. But what about words he's
using like commie and Marxist and men, you know, like
(32:29):
these are these are words that are like problematic. It's
so problem so much more problematic than any like slightly
hedging kind of inclusive definition of a word like female.
Remember that time we got yelled at for even using
the word female. I just want to put that out
there is one time it makes me chuckle a little bit, because,
(32:50):
of course, you know best of it. I think I
think we were describing like a police report. I describe
somebody in the police report as like a single you know,
female found, body found. And somebody emailed us and lambasted
us over the use of the word female, saying that
it was dismissive. And I was, first of all taking
it back because I'm like that seems wrong. Um, it
is in the dictionary. But then lo and behold, there's
(33:11):
all these little corners of the Internet that that that
have that opinion. So it goes both ways. All of
the stuff I'll never forget, I'll never forget. When a
good friend this show, Laura Vogel, bomb over at saber
and brain stuff, she had pointed out that when she
got in my head with this, I asked her about
the use the word female, and she said, Ben, the
(33:31):
thing for me about when people use the word female
is it always reminds me of the Ferengi from Ferengi
from Star Trek, and I can't get it out of
my head, you know. But also clinical, you know. But
also this this definition that this guy was so heated about,
it seems like a very fair definition. It's not even
necessarily applying specifically to human beings, right, And if I'm
(33:54):
reading correctly the way it was written, you are, you
are reading it correctly, Ben, and I completely agree. And um,
let's just be honest. This person doesn't seem like the
brightest crayon on the box either. If he's getting hung
up on this stuff, I don't think he's reading the
definition as intended, and he's looking for a devil that
is not there. If his ch if he was chatter,
(34:16):
he wouldn't be the sharpest. I think more of like
a craft single kind of you know guys, well, just
you know. To end this conversation a little bit on
a happy note, I just want to direct your attention
to the comments section of the Gizmoto article. It was good.
It was good, but we gotta credit it. We gotta
credit it. It's from dj DJ. Wait until this guy
(34:38):
hears about the story. Oh, it's so good. And there's
one other one. I really liked this. It was by
Killer Kay. Does it imagine being triggered by a dictionary?
I think that's what we're getting out earlier. It's just
like seemingly such an innocuous, uh collection of you know, words,
but it also holds a lot of weight because it
(35:00):
is like this is the one if it's that's what.
But that's the irony too, is like I don't need
the dictionary to tell me what a word means, like
culture tells me what a word means. You know, you've
been you're always talking about English being a living language
or language just being alive, you know, if you pay attention,
you know what words mean. You know, you don't need
to see it's in here highlighted. That's what it means.
(35:21):
Can't deviate from that. And this guy is putting so
much stock in this like kind of arbitrary thing that
he has no control over, and that ultimately doesn't mean
a hell of a lot anyway. That's all I've got
to say about that. But let's take a quick break,
pay from a sponsor, and then come back with some
more strange news. All right, we are back, and we
(35:46):
are jumping to stories coming out of Business Insider, Sky
News and Newsweek, specifically Sky News Australia. Congratulations, that's cool
that there's a whole Sky News Australia. All right, here
we go. This is the title of the article from
Business Insider that I read at the end of last week.
Two Russian oligarchs were found dead one day apart, alongside
(36:09):
their wives and children. Reports say so, First of all,
we all know parts of the world, especially Russia and Ukraine,
as well as a whole bunch of other countries are
embroiled in some serious hot war right now. Ukraine obviously
taking the brunt of the physical damage there and mental
and all the other types of damage. But a lot
(36:32):
of other countries are getting involved, and uh, there's the
sanctions that have been imposed on Russia have been hitting specifically.
There are natural gas and gas industries, most most of
which are at least the largest corporations that function in
there in that industry are state run, but there are
a few that are outside that are independent. Um, and
(36:53):
there are exists something called an oligarch. And I wonder
if Ben and all could we just go over what
an oligar is before we jump into the story, Like, uh,
Elon Musk would be an example of an oligarch. I'm kidding,
I'm kidding, I'm kidding, sort of a modern Uh, he's
like a new roleigarc for sure. But then I remember
from school, like an oligarch is definitely it's sort of
(37:15):
like a monarch, but based on money alone, right, essentially,
like based on power of the purse. Yeah, yeah, it's
a So whenever you hear the term oligarchy, all that
means is government by the few, right, and people would
say that maybe post Soviet Russia turned into an effective oligarchy,
(37:37):
although honestly, during communism there was still very it was
still very oligarchical and hierarchical. But if they if you
really want to put the put the sting on someone,
then you'll call their government a plutocracy, which means governed
by the rich, or you call him a kleptocracy, which
means governed by thieves. Uh. An oligarch, now, how has
(38:00):
a very specific term. I love that we're talking about
the very wealthy, and we're talking about language again as
a very specific kind of connotation today, which would be
a titan of industry, like you're describing nol who uses
their business power to influence affairs that would normally be
(38:21):
affairs of the state. So I would love to hear
from some of our fellow listeners on this. Would you
consider very powerful US business types as oligarchs? At what
point do they do they cross that that financial uh
political rubicon? You know? But that's that's basically like what
(38:42):
an oligarch is. But you're playing with language at that point.
For example, another language game. If you want to know
whether the US considers a country uh friendly or a
candidate for a student led revolution, will say, then, look,
how are described. They'll describe the governments that they like
(39:03):
as governments. They'll describe the governments they don't like as regimes.
So these are the kind of language games almost always.
M hmmm. So we're talking about all the arts in Russia,
but well one of them was in Russia, the other
one was hanging out somewhere else. Okay, so this is
what happened on tax Day here in the United States,
which is April eighteen, as a Monday. These are these
(39:27):
are rough stories. So this is just a warning. If
you're listening to this in your fraid of heart or
you don't like stories about death, stop listening now. And uh,
I guess this would be the end of the episode,
so by right to us. Okay. Uh. Person named Vadislav
Vayev who was the former vice president of gas Prom Bank.
This is the third largest bank in Russia and its services.
(39:50):
As you might have guessed, gas Prom this is the
major exporter of natural gas. Uh. This this is the
state run company gas Prom. So lots and lots of money.
This guy was the former vice president of the company.
He was found dead that day, Monday, April eighteenth, of
a gunshot wound. He was in his Moscow apartment. Also
(40:14):
found in that apartment where his wife and his daughter.
They were dead from apparent gunshot wounds. According to a
few other sources, there were a total of thirteen weapons
found within that apartment and it was on the fourteenth floor,
just so you know, and they considered a luxury apartment obviously. Uh.
(40:36):
A pistol was found in Mr. Avayev's hand and the
apartment door was locked from the inside. This is all
the initial reporting that's coming out on this event. Terribly tragic.
You can see reporting, like I said, out of Sky
News Australia where they go into a little more detail
(40:56):
about theories that have emerged, but none of those theories,
I mean, you can't really talk about them with any
sincerity because they're just comments that were made generally by neighbors,
so you know, they just don't hold a lot of weight.
One was that um Mrs Avayev was pregnant. Her name
(41:17):
was Yelena, she was forty seven years old and allegedly
she was pregnant. And the rumor is that he was
by his driver, the child was fathered by his driver,
and that is why this occurred. It was a murder suicide. Um.
But there are other reports that say she was not
pregnant at all. Again, it's just it's a matter of
(41:40):
this happening pretty recently, not a lot of information coming out,
and also a lot of private things that probably may
never come out depending on how this case moves forward.
And again, yeah, the this whole Sky News thing about
some believed it was economic pressures because of the war
that's occurring in Ukraine right now, because of the economic sanctions,
these pressures caused this murder suicide to occur. Others believe
(42:02):
that the family was killed by an entirely third party
and it was the entire family that was slaughtered, uh
and made to look a certain way. Yeah, I do
want to shout out Newsweek which made a list a
full list of quote every Russian oligarch who has died
since Putin invaded Ukraine that came out on four twenty two. Uh. Sadly,
(42:25):
you know, not to be too gallows humor about it,
but this is quite possibly looking like a pattern. I
know you have mentioned I can't here if we talked
about this off air bit, but um, I know I've
seen a lot of scuttle but that argued at least
one of these guys was murdered such that it looked
(42:47):
like a suicide or officially was considered a suicide, but
that they were Their lives were taken because they refused
to play ball with some bids on gas prone. Did
you hear about that? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well this is
this is what leads me to the second story. That
was just the first person that died. Terrible tragic story
of one person, uh in their family. The second story
(43:09):
occurs on Tuesday, April nineteen. The next day, person named
Sergei proto Sen who was fifty five years old. He
is the former vice president and chief accountant of another company,
this one titled Nova Tech and O v a t
e k. This is the second largest company in Russia
involved in guess what, producing natural gas and oil. Again
(43:33):
different because independent, not state run like gas prom is.
This person was found dead. They were hanged in the
garden of this villa that they rented as about seventy
five kilometers north of Barcelona in Spain. I don't even
know how to say it. Laurette damar, I think, uh,
you're a dam Also very similarly to the previous story,
(43:55):
this person's wife and daughter were found dead at the villa.
They were both in their beds. They were dead of
apparent stab wounds. Next to this person, a Sergey, who
was hanged, they found a bloody axe and a bloody knife,
but guess what, no suicide note and there were no
blood stains anywhere on Serge's body, which to me says
(44:22):
this was staged. You mean like execution style or are
you are like, I'm sorry? I mean the killing was
done a certain way and the crime scene was staged
to make it appear as though it happened in a
different manner. Well, I think it. It is just highly
unlikely that you could somehow stabbed to death your wife
and daughter in their beds and not get any blood
(44:42):
on you. UM's accurate. I followed and according to the
news outlet Telesinko, they're one of the first, uh, one
of the first outlets that reported on it there in Spain.
They're saying that there are two scenarios murder suicide like
they're looking at in the first example we talked about, UH,
as well as some kind of you know, third party murder,
(45:03):
like every person there was murdered and it was staged. Yeah,
there's another There's another weird part of this too, which
is the You're right. This is this story I was
thinking about. If someone did a murder, did commit murder suicide,
then just as you said, they would have blood on
them unless they were wearing outer clothing. And then it
(45:27):
taken that off and somehow very effectively disposed of it
and then did some spring cleaning and this maybe you
could look for traces in the in the shower, you
know what I mean, Like you could. It's not super
easy to clean up that kind of stuff, like with
(45:48):
a stabbing, you know. Um well, the the most messed
up thing is why would you stage? Why would you
stage the scene to look like that if you knew
you were going to kill yourself and you had just
murdered your own wife and your own child, your own daughter, Like,
why would you take the time? I feel like some
I don't know again, it's just psychologically. I feel like
(46:10):
someone who would go to the length the extreme to
murder their own family would not then think, oh, well
I should shower and everything and you know, clean everything up,
and then you know, go hang myself next to the weapons.
If they were in a very unstable mental state and
it was like a control thing or something, and they
(46:32):
it's possible but it seems kind of unlikely. And we
know that there's already tension between the the kind of
military rulers of Russia, including Putin at the top, and
some Russian business folks and and successful oligarchs. You know,
people have fled. One guy was literally just on his
(46:53):
yacht going back and forth with no known destination. I
think last month why Russian business been offered a one
million dollar bounty on Vladimir Putin himself, like dead or alive,
old school wild West style. And now and now I
can't help but wonder, you know what it feels like.
(47:15):
It still doesn't add up, And to be a fly
on the wall in those in those internal meetings, you know,
I don't know how long that situation is gonna last internally,
with all the with that increasing lack of belief in
Putent's leadership, and then also that plummeting trust he appears
(47:36):
to have in his formerly close circle. I don't know
what to make of it, but it doesn't smell right, man,
It surely doesn't. Just like the doctors falling out of
the windows during the pandemic, who made some statement about
needing to cleanse uh the interior of Russia, right, and
that's when a bunch of these oligarchs and people were
(47:59):
taken off. It was a pretty messed up statement. Uh,
sounded like deaths would be occurring. It's just weird to
me that these are all former s vps or heads
you know of these companies. I guess it's just because
they're in control of so much wealth and therefore perhaps
power within Russia, even though several of them are, as
you said, living abroad. I don't know, it's just two
(48:22):
days apart to have. If these actually are family issues,
right that then caused the deaths of the entire family
or inner inter personal relationship issues, it would be such
a strange coincidence that it's very difficult for me to believe,
you know it. We also have to consider the idea
(48:42):
setting an example quote unquote, or you know, using these
deaths as a warning, you know, like it doesn't matter
where you go, you can get touched, and it's not
just you. It's not just you. Yeah, it's not just you.
You might actually we might make you watch what happens
to your family first, and then we'll blame it on
(49:03):
you posthumously. Again, we don't have proof of this, but
they're like you were saying, Matt, the indications don't look
super great. The similarities and deaths, the statements of Putin earlier,
the fact that one one guy, Alexander Toulikov, he was
found somebody beat the snot out of him before he died. Uh.
(49:26):
And then there are the questions about murder weapons in
weird places. All these folks have links with the Kremlin.
It maybe maybe you clean out one's closet kind of thing,
or maybe it's an attempt to concentrate the wealth and
the control of state resources. It's tough to say, but
(49:47):
it's it. Now is officially a very dangerous job to
be a Russian oligarch, right yeah, yeah, yeah, um. Just
two tremendously tragic events, both of those families, both incidents
there was another child that either made a phone call
to do wellness check or stumbled upon the scene. Which again,
(50:14):
if it's if you're going to the extent to kill
one of your children, I don't know. Just imagining that
another one of your children would discover it, just something
about it just doesn't check out to me. The other
names on that list from the Newsweek article that Ben
mentioned about oligarchs you've died. Just gonna give you those
really quickly in case you want to look him up.
It's Leonid L E O n I D. Shulman s
(50:37):
h U L m A N. You mentioned Alexandre Tuliakov.
There's also a Mikhail Watford, which is a different name.
They changed his name. I believe Tolsto Shaya was the
original name, let's see. And then Vasilly Melnikov. So if
you want to look all of those up, really really
(50:59):
crazy off it feels it feels like almost cartel activity
that I've read about in the past, or or just
organized crimes, some of the old organized crime activities I
think we've all read about. I don't know. It doesn't
feel like government activity to me, Ben, but I don't know.
Maybe it is. Who knows. Someone knows. Yeah, they're they're
(51:22):
like I would estimate there at least fifty to eight
people who know for sure. Problem is they're not going
to be talking to news Week about it, right. Uh.
This this may seem like a bit of a dark
ending for this week's Strange News segment, but folks, we
think this is important. There is a known pattern and
(51:46):
precedent set by Russian forces. Russian intelligence forces with enacting
operations like this to send a message. And yes, there
other intelligence agencies have done stuff like this in the past,
to be clear. But we're I think we're both you
(52:08):
and I are trying to grapple with what this, what
this means, right, what the end game of this is? Uh,
killing the Airs has been specially brutal way too. I mean,
they're cauterizing a family line at that point. Um. But
also I've got to say, Matt, I've got to say,
(52:29):
I don't know how we get out of this one
to a little bit of levity. But I do know
my favorite the Sourus joke. I don't know if I
don't know if that was the time, I don't know.
All right, Matt, did I did I tell you I
bought that abridged the Sourus? Yeah, no, it's it's not
just terrible, it's terrible. But I know, Oh God, Matt
(52:53):
looks like a disappointed a disappointed saint, like the patron
saint of terrible jokes. Uh, we didn't write that joke.
That joke. Be careful with it. It's an antique. But
I hope you hope you groaned as as audibly as
Matt Pig there say, I just didn't know where to
take us in because these these murders are not gonna
(53:15):
there's not really a way to bring justice to these people.
And murder suicides do happen. They're an immense tragedy. And yeah,
it's it's a dark time, man, Yeah, it really is
a dark time. Uh. We didn't even bring up there
were reports and that I wanted to talk about today
that decided not to. But I'll let you check this
(53:36):
out if you want to out there. Uh, there's some
reports coming out about the viability of farmland across the world,
specifically in the United States and other places that generally
have had fertile farmland, and how there's only about sixty
years of it left, sixty years of it left, and
(53:57):
it takes about a thousand years to getting new inch
of usable top soil. And what does that mean? How's
that math work out for us? Yeah? What was that? Oh?
I sent it? I sent it off air. Weren't chatting
because we're bookworms. Uh. I was thinking of where to
live next, or where to maybe even try to buy
(54:20):
a house, and I ended up rabbit holding into that
really cool, incredibly bleak The world in a fifty to
a hundred years interactive map link. Remember that it's yeah,
it's legit. There was also a huge organized protest of
scientists about how the world's going into the crapper, and
(54:41):
they got barely any news coverage, which makes you wonder.
I looked at a piece of news because I thought
it would be a lighthearted thing. It was about this
Georgia What was she? She was? She was an official
for Georgia sports, like kids playing organized sports, and she
(55:04):
was attacked and assaulted by a parent. And I remember
seeing some local news story about it. But she has
now become the face of an entire thing. I didn't
realize this. Officials for like kids organizations, you know, Little
League Baseball and that kind of thing. They are leaving
in droves in the same way teachers are leaving in
(55:26):
droves because of the violence, the implied violence and actual
violence that's being taken out on them, in the same
way that this person that we just did a story
on commenting on the Dictionary, where people say horrible things
and in some cases they actually act them out right Now,
it's generally just punching in like some kind of brawl situation,
(55:48):
but you can only imagine how bad it could get.
I'm just feeling nervous and freaked out about the world.
That's okay, levity let before levity okay at Lexus is
telling us to wrap here. I just do check out
check out the scientists rebellion, folks, and ask yourself. It
will tell us. Actually if you saw anything about this
(56:10):
in your local news. Essentially over a hundred thousand scientists
just a few days ago across twenty five countries took
part in these demonstrations. They called the Scientists rebellion. Also
a climate activist. When Bruce set himself on fire, self
immolated in front of the Supreme Court, I think that
(56:30):
when got some got some kind of press. But we
want to know if this stuff is reported in your
neck of the woods. We want to hear what you
think about the power of both words and oligarchs. We
want to know if you think it is a good
thing or a bad thing, or an irrelevant thing for
Musk to have bought Twitter, And as always we can't
(56:52):
wait to hear more strange news from you. We try
to be easy to find online until Musk you know,
I don't know. It takes us down buys the rest
of the Internet. Yes. On Elon's brand new social media,
we are at Conspiracy Stuff. On Instagram, we are Conspiracy
Stuff Show. You can find us on Facebook both at
(57:13):
Conspiracy Stuff and on our page. Here's where it gets crazy.
To get in, all you need to know is who
hosts the show, Ben Matt Ennel. And if you don't
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Matt says, the purpose it was intended to be used for. Thanks, bet,
(57:35):
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(57:57):
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If you have a story that needs more than three minutes,
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(58:17):
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(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Nol. They called
me Bed, and we are joined as always with our
super producer Alexis code named Doc Holiday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
the stuff they don't want you to know. It's time, folks,
for some strange news. Now we comb through the forums,
(00:47):
the dark corners of the Internet. We try to bring
you things you might not have heard about or talk
about them in a way that the normal media isn't
really approaching. So, of course, Uh, one of the most
hazardous occupations right now is uh to be a Russian oligarch.
We're going to talk about that. Uh. There's a lot
(01:08):
of power and danger in knowledge. We're gonna talk about
a guy who was very offended by that. He's angry
at He's angry at the dictionary basically, uh. And then
we're also gonna answer the question, what do you get
the man who has literally everything as all the stuff.
(01:28):
You know what I mean is maybe his birthdays coming up.
Maybe he just wants to get something nice for himself.
He can't get him a camel like he would all
you just have as many camels as he wants. I propose,
just get him one more thing, even even if it's redundant.
You guys, then he has doubles, and then maybe he
gets triples are safe. They're they're best. That's true. Triples
(01:51):
is best. Triples are saying, even one to Mary, she's
a model and she died. Alright, anyway, shout out that
I think you should leave. Uh, we're talking about We're
talking about Elon Musk and Twitter. Unless you have been
purposely trying to avoid that story. He recently into the
(02:14):
deal looks like it's definitely gonna happen. Uh. This was
announced today as we record April two, THOWO bottom out
for forty five billion dollars. Uh. You do you guys
want to talk about that first? Like, I I know,
we meant we teased this a little because it was
(02:36):
already in the works last week we weren't talking, but
it seems like it didn't seem as certain fact that
you know, there could have been a poison pill put
in that would have diluted his shares. There any number
of things that would lead to like a hostile takeover attempt,
But it seems like the board of Twitter decided to
(02:58):
play ball sotty. Soon it will be a must run platform. First,
before we get into the details, we want to set
some basics, and I think it's helpful for us all
to give our own opinions here. Um, we can read
the stuff that he proposes to change about Twitter, but
(03:19):
before we dive in, and wanted to ask you guys,
what's your initial take for it? Against it? Does it matter?
I mean, I just don't care for the guy. He
bugs me, He rubs me the wrong way in a
pretty uh palpable fashion. But I do have to say
I respect the guy's hustle. I respect the guy's ability
(03:41):
to power move basically anybody, and when you're sitting on
two seventy three billion in net worth, you kind of
got the capital to do that. But he played that
board like a fiddle man. It was all like, Okay,
I'm gonna buy up all these shares and then I'm
He's like the single, you know, largest sherald in the
companies like, Oh, I'm in a hating the idea of
being on your board. Oh wait, it turns out that
(04:02):
puts limitations on all the things I can do and say.
Nobody puts Elon in a corner, you know, And then
all of a sudden, it's like he's trash talking Twitter
on Twitter. Uh, he's actually he's standing up for freedom
of speech. But like it also seems like he doesn't
like people making fun of him on the Internet. Is
he just going to clamp down on stuff like that?
(04:23):
Is he really a proponent of freedom of speech? I
just think the guy's a troll and I think he's
kind of dangerous. For me, the story is all about
what you just said. When you have that much money
in net worth, right, and you are your life is
worth this much money, it doesn't mean that you actually
have access to that amount of money. It means that
somebody like Elon Musk can go to Morgan Stanley and
(04:45):
Bank of America and those banks will give you billions
of dollars twenty billion dollars a piece or more so
that you can buy something else. Like that's crazy to me.
That is that just doesn't feel like it should exist
that one human being can do that. Let me give you,
guys another couple of examples of what people are worried about. So,
(05:07):
if you're a person at a certain age, you may
remember a brick and mortar toy store called Toys are Us.
Toys are Us is not around anymore because another company
bought it and they were able to cut a bunch
of costs to up profits, but then offset the debt
by sending it out to what had become a shell
(05:28):
of the company that once was Toys r Us. And
this spelled doom for that company, but it spelled profits
for the forces that we're engaging in this predatory activity.
Some people will tell you, yeah, it's just business as usual,
and then other people say yes, but things can be
business as usual and still be bad, you know what
I mean. So there are concerns that Musk might do
(05:53):
some kind of pumping the value of this and then
selling it off and then walking away. Twitter is struggled
to be profitable for for a while. That's pretty clear.
It's also been pretty controversial for quite some time. It
also has a lot of criticism about the algorithm. That's
a big deal. It's got a lot of criticism about bots,
(06:16):
or foreign to SIMPO agents. Uh, here's the thing. It's
never been bigger than than other social media platforms. Twitter
has like two seventeen million people, which is a lot
of people, but it's not doing Facebook Heyday numbers for instance,
or Instagram numbers necessarily. My first question was why why
(06:40):
this move, even for the world's official most wealthy person official,
because no one knows how much money putin has case
some point, even for the world's most wealthy person billion
kind of a big purchase, you know, I would say,
and a lot of it. As you beautifully pointed out, Matt,
(07:02):
a portion of that money is coming to him from
a bank, right, He's being assisted a bit. He's not
just coming by with the world's biggest suitcase filled with cash,
so that would be hilarious. Uh. Instead, there are there's
a lot of speculation about what prompted him to do this.
(07:23):
He had some cryptic polls before when he got what
nine percent of the company something like that. I want
to give you what he said, and then I want
to talk about one of the conspiracy theories I've found
which people are accepting a fact hasn't been confirmed by him.
So first he said he wants to preserve free speech
(07:45):
on Twitter. For him, he's saying it's not about the money,
it's just the content moderators were actively tamping down on
free speech and debate. He said, the free speech is
the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the
digital town square where matters vital to the future of
humanity are debated. So he wants to have more free speech,
(08:09):
less I guess hansi content moderators. He also wants to
make the algorithm open, which is interesting, his argument being
that then you can look at the code and you
can see why some tweets are hitting your feed and
why others seem to be buried or almost shadow bands.
That's interesting. I'm not against that, but I mean, here's
(08:31):
my question for you guys. Is Twitter that big a deal? Still?
I've never been a Twitter person, and I know a
certainly the people that are, and I've always try to
described as sort of a toxic cess pit of like negativity.
But also even when Ellen was kind of trolling Twitter,
he pointed out that some of their biggest power users
hadn't sent a tweet in over a year, like Justin Bieber,
(08:53):
for example, Like I heard this piece I think it
was on the Daily Uh. And this this journalist was
talking about how Ellen when he kind of was, you know,
going for Twitter on Twitter, um, after they kind of
like put all these limitations on him potentially for joining
the board. He pointed out all these problems with Twitter
after like behind this huge share. So it's like, I
(09:14):
don't know if I buy it, man, Like, I know
you use Twitter, bin, and I know there's a lot
of interesting people on Twitter, and there's you know, Frank
friend of the show, dear friend of of us uses
it a lot. Um. I just have never had much
use for it. If if if something ends up trending on Twitter,
usually see it reposted as a screenshot or like on Instagram,
which is my platform of choice. But do you believe
the whole town Square of the Internet of the World
(09:37):
thing or do you think he's just kind of it's
just smoke. I think he's just trying to pump up
the shares and make a bunch of money. Well, here
here the other two big things we should know about this. Yes,
he has in the past troll Twitter on Twitter. You know,
you gotta you gotta admire the hutzpah of it. But
i'd also like to point to a great New York
(10:00):
Times live update that's occurring as we record. As soon
as this was announced that he was taking over the
company at fifty four dollars and twenty cents to share
thirty eight percent over what you know, would you'd normally
buy it for uh. He sent some regulators into a panic.
The board said yes, and he says it's about He
(10:23):
says he also wants to this is interesting, defeat all
the spam bots. You gotta like the gaming, the gaming nomenclature.
But more importantly, which something I think might bother some
folks Twitter users in the crowd. He wants to authenticate
all humans, which means there will be another blow to
(10:44):
anonymity on Twitter. Right. And this is something that different
governments and state level actors have pushed for in the past,
the idea that the Internet should not have the option
of anonymity in any way. It's usually presented as a
way to prevent crimes, particularly the red meat crimes, that
(11:05):
everyone can reasonably oppose, like the idea of saying, you know,
we need everybody. The UK did something like this a
while back and it didn't work for them, but they
said we want everybody to be easily identifiable by their
government name anywhere on the Internet in the United Kingdom,
because it will help us prevent the abuse of children.
(11:28):
And this is clever, whether or not you think they're sincere.
This is uh, from a logic standpoint, it's a very
clever way to frame stuff, because then anybody who says
I don't think people should have to clearly identify themselves
all the time, uh, then they will inherently on some
level be tied in with people who abuse children. It's
(11:50):
it's brilliant. It's the kind of fearmongering that helps a
lot of surveillance laws get put into place. And this
is not obviously obviously this is a US condoning any
crimes like that. We're just saying it's misleading sometimes. Does
I mean everyone has to get a blue check mark? Now?
Is that the deal? Like you basically have to be
somehow multi level authenticated to be on the internet and
(12:13):
use like your real name. Is he trying to eliminate
the troll by forcing people to use their true identities?
Is that I'm speaking? Sure, I'm understanding clear these are
like the four big things he said so far. We
just don't know how much of that is. We don't
know what the specifics of that would look like yet.
I mean that that's an interesting debate, guys, the concept
(12:35):
of somehow pulling anonymity off of things like social media
and comment like when you post on a website's comments. Right,
I think I think we've got two stories that are
gonna match up pretty well here today. Yeah, right, which
is ironic considering that Elon Musk is kind of King
of the trolls too, so it's like, what what's his angle?
(12:58):
You know, I'm very suspicious of all of this. Yeah, Okay,
So here we get to the conspiracy theory. I almost
hesitate to call it a conspiracy theory, but there's this
common school of thought going around in the past, the
past few weeks or so that Musk actually is buying
Twitter as a way of shutting down this kid who
(13:22):
figured out how to track his private jet. And he
originally offered this guy a relatively small sum of money
to stop doing it, and the guy said, no, sorry,
you can't buy everything modern age Mount Samosa. And then
the idea is that he reacted by going all into
buy Twitter. That feels a little simplified to me. I
(13:45):
think maybe there's you know, if we could read the
guy's mind, there's a morass of other factors and variables
playing in. But it also opens up a conversation that
I've been having on Twitter. I admitted Eben Bowl and
HSW where uh, we're talking about the free speech aspect
of this. We said it in the past. You know,
(14:05):
a lot of people use social media. Millions upon millions
of people use it every day to communicate. It's purposely
built to be addictive and give you that little endorphin rush.
As a matter of fact, I have great respect. My
favorite conversations are when my friends and I aren't constantly
looking at our phones, but those are increasingly rare in general.
(14:27):
And with this in mind, it's sometimes easy to forget
that something so ubiquitous is still a private platform. Right Like,
if you go into any private business and you say
stuff that they don't like, it doesn't matter what you're saying,
they can push you out if they don't like it.
And Twitter, despite being seen as a champion of free
(14:50):
speech in many places, is still a private entity, which
means it can change its rules at any time because
who reads the terms of service and then you just
if you don't dig it, then you have to leave.
That's that's the rule. There's not like a an amendment
or something. You know, if you uh, that's that's why
(15:11):
you can. You can go into employment at a car
dealership and if they don't like what you're saying about
their competitor, if you're saying, look, I know I work
at a Ford dealership, but those Nissans are pretty nice.
They don't have to put up with that. You know,
you're out the door, right, do not pass go, do
(15:31):
not collect a hundred dollars. I used to work at
a music store that I want name uh in my hometown,
which I've said before, so you probably do some googling
and figure it out which one. They were horrible, horrible
people that ran this music store. They actively only hired
young kids, so and I thought it was the greatest
job in the world when I got hired there, when
I was in like, you know, high school. Um. And
they trained us and everyone that worked for them to
(15:54):
overcharge people, to sell things as high close to list
price as possible. And if anyone ever they found out
that anyone bought something at one of their competitors, they
would be banned from the store for life, and we
would have to We teenagers were the ones that had
to say, sorry, you can't come in because of this
if they even breathe a word of it, and it's
(16:15):
it's a not uncommon thing. So the question is really
what what I'm hoping to do here, folks, is to
set us up for deeper analysis later. By now, when
this strange news segment comes out, you will have heard
all of all of these facts already. Some small things
may have changed, right, uh, But barring any revelations, that's
(16:35):
where we are. I want to set it up with
questions for deeper analysis. What is the interaction between private
tech giants and free speech? What should that interaction be? Uh?
Do you believe that must whether you love the guy
or hate him, do you believe that his uh, he
has been honest and transparent about his motivations? Is there
(16:56):
something else at play? What does this mean for the future.
Here's how I'd like to end it. We talked about
we talked about the getting something for the guy who
has everything? What do you think he wants to buy next?
We'll marinate on that for a second. There're a word
from our sponsors and we'll be back with more strange
news and we're back. Got then you're right. Further analysis,
(17:25):
it's gonna be This Musk story is gonna be something.
Keep it on because it is. It is an interesting question,
like the the idea of being able to leverage that
kind of wealth and too god knows what, and to
be able to like I don't know, it's just I
think his rise to that level of opulence happened so quickly.
I think in two thousand and twenty he was like
the thirty five richest man in the world, and now
(17:46):
he's the richest man in the world. Um, and with
that comes a whole lot of power. Uh. It's a
really good question that you post been and I'm interested
in exploring this further, but for now we're gonna go
down a bit of a different rabbit hole about power,
the power of language. UM, Who controls it? Who decides
(18:06):
when words mean what they mean? If those definitions change
over time. Well, one of the big arbiters of of
this UH decision making power is the Miriam Webster dictionary. UH.
Websters defines UH woman, girl, and female in certain ways,
and these definitions have shifted over time. UH. Today the
(18:30):
word um girl is defined in websters as of relating
to or being the sex that typically has the capacity
to bear young or produce eggs, and having a gender
identity that is the opposite of mail. So let's let's
think about I don't have an older legacy definition in
(18:52):
front of me, but I think we can all probably
pick uh some of the additions to make it kind
of catch up with the times. The idea of gender identity,
you know, that being a thing and of relating to
you know, adding those instead of just being the sex
that is typically the capacity to bear young or produce eggs,
UM makes a whole lot of sense gender identity and
(19:13):
fluidity and the way we as humans and as um
you know, citizens really treat and I think about people
with differing gender identities than what they were born with.
It's come a long way. I mean, there's obviously still
horrible injustices and horrible UM violence against um, the trans community,
(19:38):
UH specifically where it used to be more highlighting and
focusing on the gay or the queer community, you know,
hate crimes. Now it is very much something that is
affecting very disproportionately young trans people. UM. Who are you
know being killed all over the world just because of
the way they the way they look, the way they identify. UM.
(19:59):
But webs has decided to go, you know, to be
that leader, to be the arbiter of culture and to
move that definition forward. That is my opinion. I I
applaud them for doing that. But there's some people, likely
the same kinds of people that would do harm to
people with transidentities, UM, who who don't like that, who
think that it represents some sort of agenda, some sort
(20:21):
of nefarious plot to pollute the minds of the youth
or something like that. And one such person UM is
a man by the name of Jeremy David Hanson, who,
between October two and October eight, according to this article
in Gizmoto UM by Jodi Serrano, submitted multiple threatening messages
(20:45):
on the like contact us form on the I'm sorry,
I'm laughing. It's just like some how you think people
would use that form on the Webster's website, UM and threatening,
essentially ranting about in opposition to things I was just describing. UM,
these these changes, these uh adaptations of these these definitions
(21:06):
over time. UM. One of the I'm gonna use some
He's got some very charged language in here, but I'm
gonna read it. I'm gonna bleep out anything that I
think is just beyond. But he says your headquarters should
be shot up and bombed. It is sickening that you
have caved to the cultural Marxist anti science and a
word I'm not going to use here, but it's starts
(21:28):
with a T and ends with annie um agenda and
altered the definition of quote female as part of the
left efforts to corrupt and degrade the English language and
deny reality. You evil Marxists should all be killed. It
would be poetic justice to have someone storm your offices
(21:48):
and shoot up the place, leaving none of you commies alive. Yeah. So,
in another screed on the same form, he said, it's
absolutely sickening that Miriam Webster now tells blatant lies and
promotes anti science propaganda. There is no such thing as
quote gender identity end quote. Um. Let's see the imbecile
(22:13):
who wrote this entry should be hunted down and shot.
And this is actually a comment he wrote on the
online version of the the Dictionary on the comment page
for the definition of female seems very interesting. They would
efer have a comment section on the dictionary. But there
you go. UH and if if we if we need
(22:34):
proof that the internet will create rage just about anything
and a reason to put nasty comments, it's it's people
commenting on the dictionary. UM. But this guy's under investigation.
There's a U S attorney and signed of the case
who said in a statement that UM anonymous threats against
specific communities will not be tolerated, adding that perpetrators will
(22:56):
be identified, arrested, and held accountable in federal court and
quoting part of the Gizmo article. In addition to her quote,
UM An FBI special agent on the case, Joseph Bana Volanta,
who's in charge of the FBI's Boston agency, UM, he said,
this is the case. Everyone has a right to express
their opinion, but repeatedly threatened to kill people UH has
(23:17):
has been alleged, takes it to a new level. Threats
to life are most certainly not protective speech, and they
cause real fear in UM in victims, which was very
clearly the case because the webster's office actually shut down
for five days because of this. So that's the story.
What what what do you guys think of this kind
(23:38):
of absolute vitriol, pointed at a such a such a
seemingly innocuous publication as the Dictionary, and yet, like I
said at the top, the ability to kind of guide
the definition of those words, it is. It is a
lot of power which I think is being exercised for
the good in this situation. My first bonds is, uh,
(24:01):
I guess he didn't have the money to buy the dictionary,
you know, like to buy the whole company, and this
change it and says a champion of free speech or whatever,
I'm kidding, But no, it's clearly this person has been
radicalize right in in some way, it does not matter
what someone's particular personal beliefs are, right, you can have
(24:25):
your personal beliefs as reprehensible as they are in the US.
And this is one of those countries where you can
also talk trash about the government and not get black bagged,
which we all kind of take for granted nowadays. But
we don't know how long it'll last, So enjoy it,
white Camp. But the thing here is that this I
don't I've never met this guy. I haven't communicated with
(24:48):
him before this story. But one thing that we can
say without stereotyping is that in a lot of these cases,
this kind of probrium and vitriol and and hate speech
is coming from a not entirely sound mind, you know
what I mean, A mind that has maybe been caught
in some algorithmic bubble and just bouncing around with their
(25:11):
only points of access being the same kind of echo
chamber information. You know. It might be that something personal
happened in this person's life that became the impetus for
them to start making these threats. But I believe, no,
he hasn't been convicted of anything. Right, he's on dollar bonds. Okay,
(25:34):
that's right. And you know, all of these these statements
are being reported where we have to attach alleged alleged
here because he has not been convicted and he obviously
didn't actually do anything. But to make these types of
threats is a step beyond the pale of free speech.
He's thirty four years old, uh, from Rossmore, California. Just
to add that detail, how did he even find out?
(25:55):
It's a good question. Must have been a bobby of
his just checking out the updated editions of the dictionary.
And that's when I was, wait a minute, what's this fly?
It's interesting to me that he was using that comment
section of I guess the dictionary to make anonymous posts.
So this person probably believed that he would never be identified.
(26:18):
If this was in fact him making these posts hasn't
been proven in a court of law yet, but you know,
this person also allegedly made I think an anonymous Twitter
account or something that they made. Then, Yeah, it was
an anonymous Twitter account called a nony mouse or non
emos or something like that, and was sending more I
(26:40):
guess you had. He had to use Twitter in order
to make comments and other things. So it's just like
if if if Musk had his way and everybody was verified,
this guy would have been we got you can't say
those things. You get a fine or you know now
we're watching you, or you know you're in trouble, and
we know it for sure. We don't have to go
through a court system like this to like prove it
(27:03):
in a court of law. We know it, you're verified,
you typed it. Well, I I gotta say that. I mean, like,
you know, at what point can you chalk it up
to dark humor or like just obscenely black, you know,
sardonic humor like in this Johnny Depp Amber heard case,
Like Johnny Depp was quoted some of his tweets or
not tweets rather text about Amber heard saying I hope
(27:25):
that sea words rotting corpse gets found in the trunk
of a Hyundai Sonata or something like that. I mean,
is that a threat or is he just being and
using like really dark, gnarly humor. I mean, you know,
the question of humor is very um, it's very subjective.
I guess maybe the issue here comes with the repetition
(27:47):
and the specificity. Yeah, and the fact that there's you
know you okay. First off, pretending something is humorous is
an agel tactic of the abusive and bullies. Uh they're
not very intelligent more as creative people, so they don't
change their tactics very often. So it's you know, it's
the idea of saying, oh, I'm just kidding. In those
(28:08):
kind of cases, your question has to be really because
usually humor has some kind of humorous aspect to it
or some sort of punchline to it. Right, not to
be you know, the Emperor of jokes or anything. But
I've heard a few of my time, and the one
the ones that work are actually kind of humorous, dark humor.
(28:29):
Total other thing. Uh, And I agree with your point,
like there can be aligned with dark humor. I think
we all love dark humor. Uh, most people in two
just kind of accept that as the normal humor these days.
But I would say with the Johnny Depp comparison, doesn't
part of the question chinge on the verb usage, like
(28:49):
I hope this happens is that is not saying someone
go do this or I'm going to do this. You know,
in the irony of this is it all comes down
to the power of words, doesn't it, Like how seriously
should we take words? You could argue not that seriously.
It's only words. It doesn't really become real until it
(29:11):
becomes a deed. And the police will even tell you
that for the most part, Like if you're freaked out
by somebody and you think they're they're like stalking you
because they they're sending you too many messages on the
Internet or something, and they haven't actually said I'm going
to kill you. Um, they they they'll tell you he's
seen in movies all the time. They know they can't
do anything about it until someone actually commits a crime. Well,
(29:33):
the messed up thing is think about how many mass
shooting events that we've seen just this year in two
where post the event occurring on the primary suspect or
the person that was arrested or found dead, they're the
person who did the shooting or the killing had made
social posts that were very specific or made videos that
were very specific about what they wanted to do, and
(29:54):
maybe sometimes they weren't even so specific. They just wanted
to do something and they wanted to take action. So like,
it stinks to know that we've got that on one side,
because until they do something, you cannot arrest that person
for Not yet it feels like it's coming soon. But yeah, um,
it seems like this is gonna be the way in
(30:16):
right looking at social media posts and maybe having control
mechanism on your twitters and your Instagrams and YouTube, which
is this is why we can't have nice things. Yeah,
and just last little detail I think is important that
the charge is UM. He's supposed to appear in federal
court coming up this week that we're recording it. Uh.
The charge he faces is one count of interstate communication
(30:40):
of threats to commit violence UM And that's directly outlined
in a news released from the U. S. Attorney's Office
for the district of Massachusetts, and that could carry with
it the penalty of five years in prison. And I
find two dollars. I have a feeling the barrier of
the burden of proof hear is going to be very,
very difficult. I don't think he's gonna get anywhere near
(31:02):
any event. It really depends. It's what you said about verbs.
If someone should do this, I you know, it would
be what did he say, should be killed someone? It
would be poetic justice to have someone go in your
office is the other thing I just have to add.
(31:23):
If you read the English encyclopedias or dictionaries, excuse me,
whether it's Miriam Webster or the O. E. Ed Oxford
English Dictionary, you'll you'll find that this language in particular
is filled with a bunch of other words that are
way worth worth uh deriding like we have. There's so
(31:44):
many words that are insufferable, honestly. And if I was
on the right if I was on the right definition
page with the comments, and I saw somebody say this, uh,
this word is trash. Whoever brought this over from Latin
or fourteenth century France, I hope they hope they had. Yeah,
I'd be like Okay, I got it, man, I don't
(32:05):
think it's shot with a blunderbuss. Yeah. Like, and if
I see somebody raising hell fire and brimstone and taking
out the digital pitchforks for words like dongle, then I'm
gonna say, yeah, I mean, that's a silly one. We
all are, we all have to say that one in
a serious conversation. It's weird. But what about words he's
using like commie and Marxist and men, you know, like
(32:29):
these are these are words that are like problematic. It's
so problem so much more problematic than any like slightly
hedging kind of inclusive definition of a word like female.
Remember that time we got yelled at for even using
the word female. I just want to put that out
there is one time it makes me chuckle a little bit, because,
(32:50):
of course, you know best of it. I think I
think we were describing like a police report. I describe
somebody in the police report as like a single you know,
female found, body found. And somebody emailed us and lambasted
us over the use of the word female, saying that
it was dismissive. And I was, first of all taking
it back because I'm like that seems wrong. Um, it
is in the dictionary. But then lo and behold, there's
(33:11):
all these little corners of the Internet that that that
have that opinion. So it goes both ways. All of
the stuff I'll never forget, I'll never forget. When a
good friend this show, Laura Vogel, bomb over at saber
and brain stuff, she had pointed out that when she
got in my head with this, I asked her about
the use the word female, and she said, Ben, the
(33:31):
thing for me about when people use the word female
is it always reminds me of the Ferengi from Ferengi
from Star Trek, and I can't get it out of
my head, you know. But also clinical, you know. But
also this this definition that this guy was so heated about,
it seems like a very fair definition. It's not even
necessarily applying specifically to human beings, right, And if I'm
(33:54):
reading correctly the way it was written, you are, you
are reading it correctly, Ben, and I completely agree. And um,
let's just be honest. This person doesn't seem like the
brightest crayon on the box either. If he's getting hung
up on this stuff, I don't think he's reading the
definition as intended, and he's looking for a devil that
is not there. If his ch if he was chatter,
(34:16):
he wouldn't be the sharpest. I think more of like
a craft single kind of you know guys, well, just
you know. To end this conversation a little bit on
a happy note, I just want to direct your attention
to the comments section of the Gizmoto article. It was good.
It was good, but we gotta credit it. We gotta
credit it. It's from dj DJ. Wait until this guy
(34:38):
hears about the story. Oh, it's so good. And there's
one other one. I really liked this. It was by
Killer Kay. Does it imagine being triggered by a dictionary?
I think that's what we're getting out earlier. It's just
like seemingly such an innocuous, uh collection of you know, words,
but it also holds a lot of weight because it
(35:00):
is like this is the one if it's that's what.
But that's the irony too, is like I don't need
the dictionary to tell me what a word means, like
culture tells me what a word means. You know, you've
been you're always talking about English being a living language
or language just being alive, you know, if you pay attention,
you know what words mean. You know, you don't need
to see it's in here highlighted. That's what it means.
(35:21):
Can't deviate from that. And this guy is putting so
much stock in this like kind of arbitrary thing that
he has no control over, and that ultimately doesn't mean
a hell of a lot anyway. That's all I've got
to say about that. But let's take a quick break,
pay from a sponsor, and then come back with some
more strange news. All right, we are back, and we
(35:46):
are jumping to stories coming out of Business Insider, Sky
News and Newsweek, specifically Sky News Australia. Congratulations, that's cool
that there's a whole Sky News Australia. All right, here
we go. This is the title of the article from
Business Insider that I read at the end of last week.
Two Russian oligarchs were found dead one day apart, alongside
(36:09):
their wives and children. Reports say so, First of all,
we all know parts of the world, especially Russia and Ukraine,
as well as a whole bunch of other countries are
embroiled in some serious hot war right now. Ukraine obviously
taking the brunt of the physical damage there and mental
and all the other types of damage. But a lot
(36:32):
of other countries are getting involved, and uh, there's the
sanctions that have been imposed on Russia have been hitting specifically.
There are natural gas and gas industries, most most of
which are at least the largest corporations that function in
there in that industry are state run, but there are
a few that are outside that are independent. Um, and
(36:53):
there are exists something called an oligarch. And I wonder
if Ben and all could we just go over what
an oligar is before we jump into the story, Like, uh,
Elon Musk would be an example of an oligarch. I'm kidding,
I'm kidding, I'm kidding, sort of a modern Uh, he's
like a new roleigarc for sure. But then I remember
from school, like an oligarch is definitely it's sort of
(37:15):
like a monarch, but based on money alone, right, essentially,
like based on power of the purse. Yeah, yeah, it's
a So whenever you hear the term oligarchy, all that
means is government by the few, right, and people would
say that maybe post Soviet Russia turned into an effective oligarchy,
(37:37):
although honestly, during communism there was still very it was
still very oligarchical and hierarchical. But if they if you
really want to put the put the sting on someone,
then you'll call their government a plutocracy, which means governed
by the rich, or you call him a kleptocracy, which
means governed by thieves. Uh. An oligarch, now, how has
(38:00):
a very specific term. I love that we're talking about
the very wealthy, and we're talking about language again as
a very specific kind of connotation today, which would be
a titan of industry, like you're describing nol who uses
their business power to influence affairs that would normally be
(38:21):
affairs of the state. So I would love to hear
from some of our fellow listeners on this. Would you
consider very powerful US business types as oligarchs? At what
point do they do they cross that that financial uh
political rubicon? You know? But that's that's basically like what
(38:42):
an oligarch is. But you're playing with language at that point.
For example, another language game. If you want to know
whether the US considers a country uh friendly or a
candidate for a student led revolution, will say, then, look,
how are described. They'll describe the governments that they like
(39:03):
as governments. They'll describe the governments they don't like as regimes.
So these are the kind of language games almost always.
M hmmm. So we're talking about all the arts in Russia,
but well one of them was in Russia, the other
one was hanging out somewhere else. Okay, so this is
what happened on tax Day here in the United States,
which is April eighteen, as a Monday. These are these
(39:27):
are rough stories. So this is just a warning. If
you're listening to this in your fraid of heart or
you don't like stories about death, stop listening now. And uh,
I guess this would be the end of the episode,
so by right to us. Okay. Uh. Person named Vadislav
Vayev who was the former vice president of gas Prom Bank.
This is the third largest bank in Russia and its services.
(39:50):
As you might have guessed, gas Prom this is the
major exporter of natural gas. Uh. This this is the
state run company gas Prom. So lots and lots of money.
This guy was the former vice president of the company.
He was found dead that day, Monday, April eighteenth, of
a gunshot wound. He was in his Moscow apartment. Also
(40:14):
found in that apartment where his wife and his daughter.
They were dead from apparent gunshot wounds. According to a
few other sources, there were a total of thirteen weapons
found within that apartment and it was on the fourteenth floor,
just so you know, and they considered a luxury apartment obviously. Uh.
(40:36):
A pistol was found in Mr. Avayev's hand and the
apartment door was locked from the inside. This is all
the initial reporting that's coming out on this event. Terribly tragic.
You can see reporting, like I said, out of Sky
News Australia where they go into a little more detail
(40:56):
about theories that have emerged, but none of those theories,
I mean, you can't really talk about them with any
sincerity because they're just comments that were made generally by neighbors,
so you know, they just don't hold a lot of weight.
One was that um Mrs Avayev was pregnant. Her name
(41:17):
was Yelena, she was forty seven years old and allegedly
she was pregnant. And the rumor is that he was
by his driver, the child was fathered by his driver,
and that is why this occurred. It was a murder suicide. Um.
But there are other reports that say she was not
pregnant at all. Again, it's just it's a matter of
(41:40):
this happening pretty recently, not a lot of information coming out,
and also a lot of private things that probably may
never come out depending on how this case moves forward.
And again, yeah, the this whole Sky News thing about
some believed it was economic pressures because of the war
that's occurring in Ukraine right now, because of the economic sanctions,
these pressures caused this murder suicide to occur. Others believe
(42:02):
that the family was killed by an entirely third party
and it was the entire family that was slaughtered, uh
and made to look a certain way. Yeah, I do
want to shout out Newsweek which made a list a
full list of quote every Russian oligarch who has died
since Putin invaded Ukraine that came out on four twenty two. Uh. Sadly,
(42:25):
you know, not to be too gallows humor about it,
but this is quite possibly looking like a pattern. I
know you have mentioned I can't here if we talked
about this off air bit, but um, I know I've
seen a lot of scuttle but that argued at least
one of these guys was murdered such that it looked
(42:47):
like a suicide or officially was considered a suicide, but
that they were Their lives were taken because they refused
to play ball with some bids on gas prone. Did
you hear about that? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well this is
this is what leads me to the second story. That
was just the first person that died. Terrible tragic story
of one person, uh in their family. The second story
(43:09):
occurs on Tuesday, April nineteen. The next day, person named
Sergei proto Sen who was fifty five years old. He
is the former vice president and chief accountant of another company,
this one titled Nova Tech and O v a t
e k. This is the second largest company in Russia
involved in guess what, producing natural gas and oil. Again
(43:33):
different because independent, not state run like gas prom is.
This person was found dead. They were hanged in the
garden of this villa that they rented as about seventy
five kilometers north of Barcelona in Spain. I don't even
know how to say it. Laurette damar, I think, uh,
you're a dam Also very similarly to the previous story,
(43:55):
this person's wife and daughter were found dead at the villa.
They were both in their beds. They were dead of
apparent stab wounds. Next to this person, a Sergey, who
was hanged, they found a bloody axe and a bloody knife,
but guess what, no suicide note and there were no
blood stains anywhere on Serge's body, which to me says
(44:22):
this was staged. You mean like execution style or are
you are like, I'm sorry? I mean the killing was
done a certain way and the crime scene was staged
to make it appear as though it happened in a
different manner. Well, I think it. It is just highly
unlikely that you could somehow stabbed to death your wife
and daughter in their beds and not get any blood
(44:42):
on you. UM's accurate. I followed and according to the
news outlet Telesinko, they're one of the first, uh, one
of the first outlets that reported on it there in Spain.
They're saying that there are two scenarios murder suicide like
they're looking at in the first example we talked about, UH,
as well as some kind of you know, third party murder,
(45:03):
like every person there was murdered and it was staged. Yeah,
there's another There's another weird part of this too, which
is the You're right. This is this story I was
thinking about. If someone did a murder, did commit murder suicide,
then just as you said, they would have blood on
them unless they were wearing outer clothing. And then it
(45:27):
taken that off and somehow very effectively disposed of it
and then did some spring cleaning and this maybe you
could look for traces in the in the shower, you
know what I mean, Like you could. It's not super
easy to clean up that kind of stuff, like with
(45:48):
a stabbing, you know. Um well, the the most messed
up thing is why would you stage? Why would you
stage the scene to look like that if you knew
you were going to kill yourself and you had just
murdered your own wife and your own child, your own daughter, Like,
why would you take the time? I feel like some
I don't know again, it's just psychologically. I feel like
(46:10):
someone who would go to the length the extreme to
murder their own family would not then think, oh, well
I should shower and everything and you know, clean everything up,
and then you know, go hang myself next to the weapons.
If they were in a very unstable mental state and
it was like a control thing or something, and they
(46:32):
it's possible but it seems kind of unlikely. And we
know that there's already tension between the the kind of
military rulers of Russia, including Putin at the top, and
some Russian business folks and and successful oligarchs. You know,
people have fled. One guy was literally just on his
(46:53):
yacht going back and forth with no known destination. I
think last month why Russian business been offered a one
million dollar bounty on Vladimir Putin himself, like dead or alive,
old school wild West style. And now and now I
can't help but wonder, you know what it feels like.
(47:15):
It still doesn't add up, And to be a fly
on the wall in those in those internal meetings, you know,
I don't know how long that situation is gonna last internally,
with all the with that increasing lack of belief in
Putent's leadership, and then also that plummeting trust he appears
(47:36):
to have in his formerly close circle. I don't know
what to make of it, but it doesn't smell right, man,
It surely doesn't. Just like the doctors falling out of
the windows during the pandemic, who made some statement about
needing to cleanse uh the interior of Russia, right, and
that's when a bunch of these oligarchs and people were
(47:59):
taken off. It was a pretty messed up statement. Uh,
sounded like deaths would be occurring. It's just weird to
me that these are all former s vps or heads
you know of these companies. I guess it's just because
they're in control of so much wealth and therefore perhaps
power within Russia, even though several of them are, as
you said, living abroad. I don't know, it's just two
(48:22):
days apart to have. If these actually are family issues,
right that then caused the deaths of the entire family
or inner inter personal relationship issues, it would be such
a strange coincidence that it's very difficult for me to believe,
you know it. We also have to consider the idea
(48:42):
setting an example quote unquote, or you know, using these
deaths as a warning, you know, like it doesn't matter
where you go, you can get touched, and it's not
just you. It's not just you. Yeah, it's not just you.
You might actually we might make you watch what happens
to your family first, and then we'll blame it on
(49:03):
you posthumously. Again, we don't have proof of this, but
they're like you were saying, Matt, the indications don't look
super great. The similarities and deaths, the statements of Putin earlier,
the fact that one one guy, Alexander Toulikov, he was
found somebody beat the snot out of him before he died. Uh.
(49:26):
And then there are the questions about murder weapons in
weird places. All these folks have links with the Kremlin.
It maybe maybe you clean out one's closet kind of thing,
or maybe it's an attempt to concentrate the wealth and
the control of state resources. It's tough to say, but
(49:47):
it's it. Now is officially a very dangerous job to
be a Russian oligarch, right yeah, yeah, yeah, um. Just
two tremendously tragic events, both of those families, both incidents
there was another child that either made a phone call
to do wellness check or stumbled upon the scene. Which again,
(50:14):
if it's if you're going to the extent to kill
one of your children, I don't know. Just imagining that
another one of your children would discover it, just something
about it just doesn't check out to me. The other
names on that list from the Newsweek article that Ben
mentioned about oligarchs you've died. Just gonna give you those
really quickly in case you want to look him up.
It's Leonid L E O n I D. Shulman s
(50:37):
h U L m A N. You mentioned Alexandre Tuliakov.
There's also a Mikhail Watford, which is a different name.
They changed his name. I believe Tolsto Shaya was the
original name, let's see. And then Vasilly Melnikov. So if
you want to look all of those up, really really
(50:59):
crazy off it feels it feels like almost cartel activity
that I've read about in the past, or or just
organized crimes, some of the old organized crime activities I
think we've all read about. I don't know. It doesn't
feel like government activity to me, Ben, but I don't know.
Maybe it is. Who knows. Someone knows. Yeah, they're they're
(51:22):
like I would estimate there at least fifty to eight
people who know for sure. Problem is they're not going
to be talking to news Week about it, right. Uh.
This this may seem like a bit of a dark
ending for this week's Strange News segment, but folks, we
think this is important. There is a known pattern and
(51:46):
precedent set by Russian forces. Russian intelligence forces with enacting
operations like this to send a message. And yes, there
other intelligence agencies have done stuff like this in the past,
to be clear. But we're I think we're both you
(52:08):
and I are trying to grapple with what this, what
this means, right, what the end game of this is? Uh,
killing the Airs has been specially brutal way too. I mean,
they're cauterizing a family line at that point. Um. But
also I've got to say, Matt, I've got to say,
(52:29):
I don't know how we get out of this one
to a little bit of levity. But I do know
my favorite the Sourus joke. I don't know if I
don't know if that was the time, I don't know.
All right, Matt, did I did I tell you I
bought that abridged the Sourus? Yeah, no, it's it's not
just terrible, it's terrible. But I know, Oh God, Matt
(52:53):
looks like a disappointed a disappointed saint, like the patron
saint of terrible jokes. Uh, we didn't write that joke.
That joke. Be careful with it. It's an antique. But
I hope you hope you groaned as as audibly as
Matt Pig there say, I just didn't know where to
take us in because these these murders are not gonna
(53:15):
there's not really a way to bring justice to these people.
And murder suicides do happen. They're an immense tragedy. And yeah,
it's it's a dark time, man, Yeah, it really is
a dark time. Uh. We didn't even bring up there
were reports and that I wanted to talk about today
that decided not to. But I'll let you check this
(53:36):
out if you want to out there. Uh, there's some
reports coming out about the viability of farmland across the world,
specifically in the United States and other places that generally
have had fertile farmland, and how there's only about sixty
years of it left, sixty years of it left, and
(53:57):
it takes about a thousand years to getting new inch
of usable top soil. And what does that mean? How's
that math work out for us? Yeah? What was that? Oh?
I sent it? I sent it off air. Weren't chatting
because we're bookworms. Uh. I was thinking of where to
live next, or where to maybe even try to buy
(54:20):
a house, and I ended up rabbit holding into that
really cool, incredibly bleak The world in a fifty to
a hundred years interactive map link. Remember that it's yeah,
it's legit. There was also a huge organized protest of
scientists about how the world's going into the crapper, and
(54:41):
they got barely any news coverage, which makes you wonder.
I looked at a piece of news because I thought
it would be a lighthearted thing. It was about this
Georgia What was she? She was? She was an official
for Georgia sports, like kids playing organized sports, and she
(55:04):
was attacked and assaulted by a parent. And I remember
seeing some local news story about it. But she has
now become the face of an entire thing. I didn't
realize this. Officials for like kids organizations, you know, Little
League Baseball and that kind of thing. They are leaving
in droves in the same way teachers are leaving in
(55:26):
droves because of the violence, the implied violence and actual
violence that's being taken out on them, in the same
way that this person that we just did a story
on commenting on the Dictionary, where people say horrible things
and in some cases they actually act them out right Now,
it's generally just punching in like some kind of brawl situation,
(55:48):
but you can only imagine how bad it could get.
I'm just feeling nervous and freaked out about the world.
That's okay, levity let before levity okay at Lexus is
telling us to wrap here. I just do check out
check out the scientists rebellion, folks, and ask yourself. It
will tell us. Actually if you saw anything about this
(56:10):
in your local news. Essentially over a hundred thousand scientists
just a few days ago across twenty five countries took
part in these demonstrations. They called the Scientists rebellion. Also
a climate activist. When Bruce set himself on fire, self
immolated in front of the Supreme Court, I think that
(56:30):
when got some got some kind of press. But we
want to know if this stuff is reported in your
neck of the woods. We want to hear what you
think about the power of both words and oligarchs. We
want to know if you think it is a good
thing or a bad thing, or an irrelevant thing for
Musk to have bought Twitter, And as always we can't
(56:52):
wait to hear more strange news from you. We try
to be easy to find online until Musk you know,
I don't know. It takes us down buys the rest
of the Internet. Yes. On Elon's brand new social media,
we are at Conspiracy Stuff. On Instagram, we are Conspiracy
Stuff Show. You can find us on Facebook both at
(57:13):
Conspiracy Stuff and on our page. Here's where it gets crazy.
To get in, all you need to know is who
hosts the show, Ben Matt Ennel. And if you don't
like that kind of stuff, why not give us a
phone call? Yes, use your phone for, as my pal
Matt says, the purpose it was intended to be used for. Thanks, bet,
(57:35):
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(57:57):
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If you have a story that needs more than three minutes,
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(58:17):
we are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
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